As a complete aside, and because you, CocoT, are an English teacher, I thought I should mention the verb you are looking for here is "whet" which means to "make keen or more accurate", the dictionary even gives "to whet the appetite" as an example. Of course, this completely ruins the joke.

They are homonyms so you can make this joke when speaking, but, to me, it just stuck out in text.

Ooooh, I see... Yeah, it does totally ruin the joke but then I really appreciate your pointing it to me, Frik, saves me from embarassment in front of my students ... We have something in French ("mettre l'eau a la bouche") which translates into something like "to bring water to your mouth" and basically means "whet your appetite", so it got me confused there. But then you guys also say "mouth-watering" to mean "appetizing", right?

I must admit I was so busy with other stuff and remote from what was going on during the last QExpo that I did not notice the organizational problems you were faced with, Scar. All the more merits to the team to make it look so awesome, then And yeah, you are right, while there are other things to think about before setting the date, it does not mean that it should be set only a couple of weeks in advance. The 8-month thing sounds pretty right.
I totally agree on the TF thing. I am sure there could be ways to attract those members of the community to the event.
As to a CocoT release, well, it's true that my last booth kind of sucked and that, except for a biggish UQC update, the one before was also not ground-breaking ... I'm planning on working on TransloQuake in the next couple of weeks, though, so I'm hoping to post some screenshots in the general discussion thread soon

So I guess it's a little late to be thinking about organizing a QExpo event for this year (unless we did it in like, November). However, we should start thinking about features and others ideas for the next one, and how we can make that one really popularand populated. Maybe we should open a new thread for that?

Yup, I think that's a good idea. It's true that, from QExpo to QExpo, I have the feeling that booths were filled later and later, sometimes at the very end of the event. If, when QExpo starts, more than half the booths are empty or almost empty, it really does not look good, because that's when a lot of people from the gaming community at large will be checking the site for the first time (and last if they are dissapointed with what they find). And I personally think it's better for the site to have no booth than empty booths.
So giving more time before is a very good idea. Maybe the moderators could also be a little tougher and "activate" booths as "visible" only when they consider the contents as sufficiently rich (and it wouldn't need to be a release, obviously, but at least some text contents and screenshots, for example). That might piss off some people, but then if they have really not much to offer, then I think it makes sense to delay their participation to QExpo. It's a very basic and logical rule, when you think about it. There could be a "list" of "possibly upcoming booths" but without any link to the actual (empty) booth. It might be a good a good incentive for participants to actually try to do/release something, too.
A possible side-effect is that some people might give up faster because, not having received any exposure, they feel they can just abandon whatever plan they had and noone would notice anyway. Once again, though, the idea would be to define what would be meant by "minimal" contents and make sure that those people with ideas and potential are encouraged to offer it so that their booth can be visible from the start of the event on.